A revista do movimento adventista: um estudo da imprensa confessional no início do século XX

Abstract

This study presents the results of research conducted within the Master’s in History program at the Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD), in the research line Society, Politics, and Representations. It identifies and analyzes the Seventh-day Adventist confessional press by focusing on a periodical circulating in Brazil in the early twentieth century, specifically between 1906 and 1910. The study seeks to understand how leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—through the periodical Revista Trimensal, later Revista Mensal and, subsequently, Revista Adventista—guided believers’ practices, behaviors, and ways of thinking, acting as an instrument of disciplining and of religious, educational, and social formation within this community in Brazil. The research departs from the scarcity of studies on the Adventist press as a historical source and as an instrument of identity formation. The methodological framework combined documentary and historical analysis with an inductive approach, based on the systematic reading of all issues within the delimited timeframe. From this examination, recurrent themes, authors, sections, vocabulary, and narrative patterns were mapped, allowing analytical categories to emerge from the source itself. In dialogue with contributions by Roger Chartier (representations and cultural practices), Michel de Certeau (the historiographical operation), Jörn Rüsen (the narrative constitution of historical sense), Edward Thompson (critique of evidence), and Tânia de Luca (the press as object and historical source), the study seeks to understand how the magazine functioned as a space for the production, circulation, and reception of religious and social representations. The central objective is to investigate the tenets of the Adventist Movement disseminated through institutional print in this initial period of circulation in Brazil. It concludes that Revista Adventista acted as a mediator between believers and doctrine, enabling processes of religious instruction and disciplining through Sabbath School, the emphasis on core doctrines, and the methodical organization of the institutional structure, which favored the consolidation of Adventist identity in Brazil. In this sense, the study contributes to debates on the use of the periodical press as a historical source, highlighting its role as a strategy of communication, institutional consolidation, and preservation of denominational values during the period analyzed.